April 29, 30 @ 8pm + May 1 @ 7pm

The Kate Weare dance company reunites with The Crooked Jades live onstage in

Bright Land

Presented for the first time to West Coast audiences at ODC Theater in San Francisco. Bright Land fuses the ancient with the modern in a thrilling blend that features SF-based old time band The Crooked Jades playing live alongside Kate Weare Company’s extraordinary dancers. A combination of skill, guts and heart simply not to be missed!

tickets are $18/$15, @ odcdance.org –

Axelrod, Cary & Foss, that star studded Jug Band trio, with our own BILL FOSS, Meredith Axelrod plus Keith Cary, will be gracing the Mando Fest stage with a do-not-miss set. Too bad we don’t know the as of yet undetermined time of said set, but we do know the music starts @1:00PM. Check back with our own Knucs upcoming schedule page. More info below…

Festival of the Mandolins

Sunday, Apr 10, 2011 | 9:30 AM | $15 / $12 Adv./ Children free.

Join us for the annual gathering of the mandolins. Five diverse ensembles will be performing on this year’s program! The Axelrod, Cary, & Foss Jug Band, Gravenstein Mandolin Ensemble, Grandpa Banana, Aurora Mandolin Orchestra, and Marla Fibish & Gari Hegedus. Add the BYO Mandolin Orchestra (Bring Your Own), all the mandolin workshops, and you have a day that cannot be missed.

The performances for the public will commence at 1PM. Workshops at 9:30AM. Food and drink will be available from 1PM. Hristos Kolev will again provide ethnic food. Advance tickets: www.BrownBagTickets.com

Croatian American Cultural Center
60 Onondaga Ave.
510-649-0941
San Francisco, CA 94112
www.CroatianAmericanWeb.org

BOONVILLE! GOLDEN OLD~TIME CAMP OUT!!

Was fun, weather was good, Knucs performed at Lauren’s restaurant across the street (FANTASTIC FOOD!)  with sets by Barry Shultz, , then Eric & Suzy Thompson, and then us. Also called up to play were Heath Curtds, Carlo Calabi, Judy Stavely, and Frannie Leopold. We and a host of other friends from around the state then wandered back to the campsite and stayed up justabout all night, visiting and playing.

We also played a wedding on Saturday, where the groom’s mother casually mentioned that she was the grand daughter of Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith. If we had known prior to the gig that the groom was the great grandson, and for a time had his fiddle in posession, we  might have adjusted our set list a wee bit!! Well, next time we play a wedding for a direct descendant of an incredibly famous long-dead fiddler we revere, we will make a point of it…

photos to come!

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The Knucks have returned from various points in the Southeastern US mountains, such as Tennessee, West Virginia, regular Virginia, and North Carolina.

Some quick high points, and then maybe later this week we will elaborate, with words and photos:

Karen attended the  Clifftop Appalachian String Band Music Festival, and had a ton of fun jamming, greeting the dawn, getting eaten by mosquitoes, and accompanying her pal Joseph on guitar as he made the finals and then won first place in the fiddle contest. Gosh that was fun!

here’s a video clip of Joseph Decosimo (and Karen playing guitar) …playing Charlie Acuff’s “Josie Girl”, which landed us in the finals…disclaimers are that I think the speed and audio sync are screwed up, because how could we have won if we were playing that frantically and THEN sped up??? rreally….

Bill & Martha made a splash head on into the Chattanooga Old~Time music community. We’ll let them tell you about that!

Karen spent a day with Loreen and Clyde Davenport, in their double wide up on the Cumberland Plateau. Many a “Clyde tune” was played by Clyde and Karen while Loreen worked on canning their huge crop of beans, like she’s done every year, like, forever. She’s a bit younger than Clyde, who will be 90 in October, and is in fine shape.

Back as a trio, the KNucks performed with our pal Sheila Kay Adams in a beautiful cafe in Marshall, NC ( outside of Asheville) called Zuma. We spent another wonderful afternoon and evening at Sheila Kay’s home up overlooking the mountain ridges, being privileged to get to know her and her son so much better.

Another night we braved the mountain passes, thunder, lightning, and driving rain to play a gig in Johnson City, TN, and the rest of our time together hung out on the river in Hot Springs, NC. That’s right on the Appalachian Trail, if’n you don’t know… we dunked ourselves in the local swimming holes and made plans to return.

more sooon……….!

We’ll post some of our adventures and photos HERE!!

We are also available on iTunes, but you won’t get the super cool inside and outside covers designed by Karen.

We’re also happy to announce that Elderly Instruments (one of our favorite, all around music stores) liked it so much they want to sell it in their store and online too. They’ll be available there as soon as they receive the boxful we sent. If you’re in Lansing MI, always drop by and visit the friendly people at Elderly.

For all of you mandolin nuts, you can also hear the track from the CD “Wildcat Rag” in the mp3 section on the Mandolin Cafe, Bill’s favorite place to spend time on the web. “Wildcat” is a cover of the vintage recording by Roy Hobbs and Asa Martin by Bill on mandolin and Karen on the guitar. You can find it at http://www.mandolincafe.com/mp3/ then click on the Old Time tab, then click on “Wildcat Rag.”  Enjoy!

We took delivery while we were up @ Grass Valley. (did you know we played at the Grass Valley Bluegrass Festival??), and are about to set CD sales up with CD Baby.  All this technology…

anyway, we will be adding all the info we said we were a-gonna add to the website, slowly but surely.

Stay tuned!!